Maybe I shouldn’t post this here, but I know there are a few of us C3 guitar players so I’ll give it a try…
Here’s the problem: I created all my tones in C3 a few years ago on a humbucker guitar that’s my main gigging axe. Recently I went back to my Strats, and want to change my main axe to a strat. But my soaring lead tone is now as wimpy as soggy lettuce. Or my rhythym crunch is about as crunchy as week-old cereal. So, what’s the best way to solve this without re-tweaking every single tone?
My solution was to just create 2 versions of all songs, and for single coil versions insert a “match” rack in front of the amp sim rack. It’s a little unwieldy, but it definitely works. Currenlty I’m using a 20 band EQ (Marvel GEQ) and Nick Crowe’s Tube Driver for Vol and drive, which really helps the Strat have a bit more punch. Without C3, this would be nearly impossible.
I know I’ll never get it perfect, every guitar sounds different, especially single vs humbucker, but I can get it a lot closer than without a match rack. I recently got TH-U and it does have settings for single coil vs humbuckers, which is great, but I still need some eq matching. And I still have a lot of tones using S-Gear that I really like, which doesn’t have single/humbucker options. Currently I’ve had to create about 10 different match states for the Strat, which works across about 60 songs.
Yep. I use Blue Cat Re-Guitar. Add a humbucker to your single coil Guitar. Just put it at the beginning of your chain. I use it a lot to get a Les Paul sound out of my Strats. Also adds a hollow body Gibson or Acoustic Martin emu to your Strat. I ran into the same problem early on when using 2 of my gigging Strats. One Strat has single coil pickups, the other is more of a rocker with a humbucker on the Bridge. Blue Cat helped that when using only one. I just setup a rack, and dropped it into the guitar chain. Didn’t have to dial in a new tone for every song.
I used to have the same challenge of swapping between two different guitars with different output levels and sound. These days, I’ve limited my live setup to one guitar (and an almost identical backup), so I’ve gotten out of that.
Here’s my solution at the time: I introduced an “input rack” in all my guitar songs (instead of connecting directly from the input port). This input rack took the physical input from the audio interface, ran it through an EQ (FabFilter Pro-Q) and then out through the rack output port. I had two different rack states for my two different guitars, and I set the rack state to NOT be controlled by the containing song:
One of the rack states was clean through for my humbucker guitar, for the other, the EQ was set to give it a frequency boost where it was weak and an overall level boost to compensate for the lower pickup output level.
At the beginning of a gig or rehearsal, I simply opened any song where I played guitar, set the rack state of this “input rack” to the correct one for the guitar I was using, and the rack stayed that way for the rest of the evening (works only with pre-loaded setlists).
This means that you’ll have to find a “middle groung” EQ/boost settings that will work for your strat across all of your songs. But then you’ll be able to simply pick a guitar for the evening without hassle.
I also use the Re-Guitar, but that’s more due to my single-guitar approach - I use it to get single-coil sounds out of my humbucker guitar, so that’s a song-specific approach. I use the same humbucker guitar for the whole repertoire, and where the song calls for it, I use Re-Guitar to change the sound.
Thanks Torsten! Yes, I’ve been doing it essentially the same way with an EQ and drive rack in front of the amp sims.
Last night I found a slightly better way… I put new strings on both guitars, and recorded the dry, raw, straight guitar signal on the humbucker guitar… Which is what I created all my tones with originally. But I recorded each of the five pickup positions. Then I took the dry Strat and did some EQ and volume matching for those five pick up positions as well. In the past I was trying to use the processed out put of the ampsim and match the strat to that. But using the dry signal made a big difference. Now I’m down to just five states which is more than manageable.
Still going to try Re-guitar though, if nothing else it will open up some new tones. And it looks like the acoustic guitar tones could be slightly better than my acoustic simulation in TH-U.
Peavey ReValver was the 1st amp sim I saw modeling guitars. I think they either sold the software, or just discontinued it. I still have the older version, and it’s re-guitar version was pretty good. There is ReValver 4 for free here, if you want to try it. https://www.audiomediaresearch.com/
I recently bought the IK Axe I/O Solo. It’s a USB audio interface (a pretty good one - plays larger Superior Drummer kits from my edrum kit at 64 buffers with no glitching and I really like how the mic pre sounds). It’s primary differentiator though is that input 1 has an impedance knob they call Z-Tone - all the way to the left is “Sharp” - all the way to the right is “Bold”. You can switch between the “Pure” (lookup Pure preamps to learn more) pre-amp circuit and a JFET circuit which I think sounds better for rock guitar.
I’m mentioning all this because they also make a pedal that has the above Z-Tone input features along with some boost and EQ minus the audio interface.
EDIT - I should have mentioned that I’ve really been enjoying playing guitars and basses through the Z-Tone input into both AmpliTube and bx_bassdude (Fender), my new free Brainworx SVT (see Fred’s post on how to get it free - it sounds pretty good for guitar also).
